As Woody Allen and Roman Polanski continue to be welcomed with open arms at European film festivals, BRIAN VINER asks – why are the French and Italians happy to applaud movies made by men accused of appalling sex crimes?

Hand-in-hand with his 52-year-old wife Soon-Yi, Woody Allen looked forward to an 87-year-old man as he arrived at the Venice Film Festival on Monday.

The couple, accompanied by their two adopted daughters, walked the red carpet, stopping every now and then to pose for the paparazzi. But despite the eternal fear on Allen’s face, the filmmaker seemed like a man with the world at his feet, not one haunted by controversy.

Allen forms a triptych of directors, including Roman Polanski and Luc Besson, some of whom have been made persona non grata during the annual floating city cinematic spectacle.

They all present new movies, but all have been accused of sexual impropriety at some point in their careers.

Allen was famously accused of abusing his adopted daughter when she was just seven; Polanski pleaded guilty to intercourse with a minor and Besson, recently acquitted of rape, once fathered a child with a 16-year-old girl (he was 33).

While such a line-up would be unthinkable for, say, the upcoming London Film Festival, the Europeans seem unperturbed – although some jeers and unseemly scuffles occurred as protesters tried to make it clear how unwelcome they were… to them, at least.

But the five-minute standing ovation that closed the premiere of his fiftieth film, Coup de Chance, undoubtedly made up for it. It’s a witty black comedy and his best film in years. It is also his first French-language photo.

The truth is that even if it weren’t for the Hollywood writers’ strike that led to a shortage of stars at this year’s festival – what the sane describe as a ‘Venice shortage’ – Allen would have been welcomed by the event’s organizers as a visiting potentate, despite allegations of abuse from his adopted daughter Dylan, his ex-partner and Dylan’s mother Mia Farrow, and Dylan’s older brother Ronan. He vehemently denies the allegations and no charges have ever been filed.

His adopted son (with Farrow) Moses defends him, saying Farrow turned on Allen when she discovered he was having an affair with Soon-Yi, her adoptive daughter, whom Allen had known since she was ten and helped raise.

Yes, it’s a complicated story, but whatever the truth, the smell of scandal surrounding Allen has only grown stronger since the MeToo movement erupted in the wake of producer Harvey Weinstein’s sex crimes. A slew of well-known British and American actors have refused to work with Allen, while others have publicly regretted doing so in the past. Some say that’s why he chose to make his latest film in French.

In general, the French, like the Italians, don’t care much for any crimes and transgressions (to quote the title of another film by Allen) that the veteran director may have committed. He is also regularly and lavishly celebrated at the Cannes Film Festival every year.

And so does, even more controversially, Roman Polanski.

He is now 90 and still a fugitive from justice in the US, where he pleaded guilty in 1977 to “unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.” In return, more serious charges were dropped. These included “rape through the use of drugs, sodomy, perversion and the performance of an immoral and lascivious act on a child under the age of 14.” His victim, Samantha Gailey, was 13.

Nevertheless, Polanski was also honored last Friday in Venice with a premiere for his film The Palace. Protests also took place there, which would undoubtedly have been longer and louder if the Polish director had dared to appear in person. Nevertheless, there was scattered applause and half-hearted cheers when his name appeared on the screen. I heard no yelling.

There should have been a lot of booing at the end if only because of what we had to endure on screen. The palace is a horrible fellow. If it ends up being the director’s last film, whose credits include such classics as Repulsion (1965), Rosemary’s Baby (1968), and Chinatown (1974), then his career will fade into the opposite of style. Set in a posh Swiss hotel on New Year’s Eve 1999, it’s a crude, crass, desperately unfunny comedy filled with screeching stereotypes and, sadly, John Cleese. He plays an American tycoon with a much younger wife (with a casting that you’d expect would have given him pause for thought before accepting a role in a Polanski movie, but apparently that didn’t happen).

But even if its inclusion is an artistic disgrace to the Venice Film Festival, the far greater disgrace is that self-proclaimed pedophile Polanski has a film here at all. For Rita Di Santo, film critic for the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto, it is reasonable to show Polanski’s photos in Venice. “Both he and Woody Allen deserve attention because of what they’ve done in the movies,” she says.

‘That’s why they’re both valued more in Europe than in Britain or America. And that is why (Festival director Alberto) Barbera has the courage to invite them. He is not concerned about what they have done in their private lives. If the personal behavior of famous artists prevented us from looking at their work, we would never enjoy the paintings of Caravaggio, who was a murderer and slept with boys.’

It’s an age-old debate: should the artist’s life diminish the value of art? I do not believe it; Di Santo’s point about Caravaggio is valid.

Admiring a painting, film, or even a building is hardly an endorsement of any wrongdoing on the part of its creator. But we should all be free to boycott anything on our own moral grounds.

Because of my job, I have to see Polanski’s films. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t. Repulsion turns out to be a very appropriate title for one of his best-known photographs – it’s how I feel about him.

Though I feel differently towards Allen; his condemnation by the public eye is shaky at best, though his affair with the young Soon-Yi is certainly questionable.

As for Barbera, he said before the festival: ‘Polanski is one of the last great masters of European cinema. He made big mistakes fifty years ago. He admitted that he was guilty. He asked for forgiveness from the victim and the victim granted her forgiveness.’

Coincidentally, Polanski’s remorse for his crimes has been tempered to say the least. But it is undoubtedly true that the French and Italians in particular are much more willing than the British or Americans to turn a blind eye to sexual misconduct, even deviant behavior, if the miscreants are people they otherwise admire.

Barbera, who finds it “completely unbelievable” that Woody Allen’s films are no longer appearing in the US, was also more than happy to premiere Dogman, an English-language film by Luc Besson, this year. He is the French director accused and acquitted of rape, who started dating actress Maiwenn when she was fifteen and he was more than twice her age. They had met when she was twelve.

That there would be three directors in Venice this year with sex scandals to their name almost seems like an act of defiance. It’s all the more extraordinary in light of MeToo, which has so agitated Hollywood and continues to inspire some outspoken feminist films. One of the best movies, Poor Things, starring Emma Stone, ironically contains a very good cry to win the coveted Golden Lion.

On Sunday a series of messages appeared on the Lido, all written in black on separate sheets of paper and all with the same message: ‘Is the Golden Lion going to a rapist?’

Whoever posted them probably got the facts a bit wrong: neither Coup de Chance nor The Palace are in contention for the top prize, while Dogman is.

But whether or not the directors of those films compete for the Golden Lion, it doesn’t stop them from being put in the spotlight.

And that can’t be right.